Another hideous flaw in the pre-1998 National Defence Act
In 1998, another flaw was removed from the National Defence Act.
This flaw in a way was even more hideous than the Summary Investigation that I talked about in a previous blog entry.
The problem with the 3-year-time-bar is that it prohibited the laying of charges more than 3 years after the date of the alleged Service Offence.
You’ll remember from the previous post that the National Defence Act enumerates Criminal Code offences as Service Offences. As such crimes such as Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery were service offences that could be tried by Service Tribunal. This is why Captain McRae was tried in a military court martial for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” such as “Gross Indecency”, “Indecent Assault”, “Buggery” with boys under the age of 15 on Canada Forces Base Namao.
The interesting thing about this 3-year-time-bar is that it applies to ALL service offences prior to 1998.
Also, even if a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is currently retired and no longer subject to the Code of Service Discipline, if the member was subject to the Code of Service discipline when they sexually abused a child on a military base they would still enjoy all of the rights that the National Defence Act bestowed upon the service member at the time of the offence.
What this means is that even if the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service were to find the man from the sauna who Peter provided me to for the purposes of oral sex this man could never be charged if he was a member of the Canadian Forces regular force in 1980.
If this man by some small miracle is a civilian with no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and was never subject to the Code of Service Discipline, then he could be charged under the criminal code.
Don’t believe me?
In 2017, in a telephone call with Sergeant Damon Tenaschuk of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Pacific Region, I asked Mr. Tenaschuk if he could try to talk to Colonel Dan Munro. I thought that this would be a simple matter seeing as how Sgt. Tenaschuk was on CFB Esquimalt just outside of Victoria, BC and Daniel Edward Munro lived in a suburb of Victoria, BC.
Instead, I received the following email from Sgt. Tenaschuk:
So there you have it.
The three year time bar is real, and it affects all Service Offence and all Criminal Code matters that occurred prior to 1998.
All I had asked for was for Sgt. Tenaschuk to talk to Daniel Edward Munro to see if Daniel had improperly bent the rules when he preferred the charges that Captain McRae faced in court martial and dismissed the other charges.
For Tenaschuk’s legal officer to say right of the bat that the 3-year-time-bar would prevent the laying of charges makes me wonder how many Canadian Forces personnel got away with Service Offences / Criminal Code offences prior to 1998.
Anyone who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline prior to 1998, and who sexually abused a child on a defence establishment, will NEVER face their accuser in court. Their victim will NEVER receive justice.
And this suits the Minister of National Defence and the Chief of Defence staff just fine. As it stands right now, you don’t hear anything about children being sexually abused on military bases by military personnel from the pre-1998 days. And as it turns out this isn’t because no child was ever sexually abused on base. It’s because if these kids didn’t report their crimes within the period of three years they would never be able to report their crimes..
In 2010, charges were brought against retired Brigadier General Roger Bazin. He was accused of sexually abusing a child on Canadian Forces Base Borden in the early 1970s. The matter made it so far as court, and then suddenly everything was dropped. No explanation was ever made to the media as to why the charges were dropped. You’d think that if the Crown has just smeared someone’s name through the media that they’d be obligated to explain to the public why the charges were dropped at the last minute.
No lawyer in the media claiming “my client has been vindicated”. Nothing. Radio Silence.
In my matter, Captain Father Angus McRae was alive until May 20th, 2011.
The investigation into my complaint started on March 5th, 2011.
The CFNIS knew about the connection between my babysitter, Peter, and Captain Angus McRae right from the get-go.
This means that the JAG, the Provost Marshal, and the CFNIS were aware at the start of the investigation that even if they were able to arrest Peter, that they’d never be able to charge Captain Father Angus McRae. This must have posed quite the dilemma for the Canadian Forces.
They had the CFSIU paperwork from 1980. They knew what Peter had been doing.
But they also knew that they would never be able to charge Angus McRae.
This would be quite the scandal, no?
When the CFNIS started the investigation in March of 2011, they couldn’t have possibly known that Captain McRae would have been about to die. They would have had to structure the investigation with the knowledge that Angus McRae was alive.
Anyways, here’s what Legislative Summary LS-311E had to say about the 3-year-time-bar-flaw.
Cover PageInformation3-year-time-barLS-311E Section 2 a 1
What did you do that the Judge Advocate General won’t allow an officer of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit to talk to you about the events that occurred on your base from May of 1980 until July of 1980?
Can you actually sleep with this on your conscience?
Or do you rest well at night know that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence will cover your ass, not because you’re a great guy, but because if they uncover something unsavoury from Canadian Forces Base Namao that this will snowball into unsavoury events on many of the other Canadian Forces Bases where men such as yourself were able to hide things that had occurred on the bases that you were commanding.
How many kids did commanding officer bury on the bases?
How the Canadian Forces attitude towards homosexuals affected their investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae and his victims.
Prior to 1994 the Canadian Armed Forces had a policy against homosexuals in the military. This was enforced by Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20. I’ve been told by others that this policy would have had no effect on military dependents living on Canadian Forces Bases as we weren’t subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
That may be true, but the attitude towards homosexuals was an official policy, and every service member in the Canadian Forces would have been exposed to this policy and the reasoning behind this policy.
No father in the Canadian Armed Forces would obviously wanted a mentally ill homosexual living in their house.
What this means is that every person living on a Canadian Forces Base, whether they be a service member or a military dependent, was exposed to the horrific treatments that CFAO 19-20 enabled.
The investigation of Captain McRae was commenced in mid-May 1980 after the base military police interviewed Peter due to numerous complaints made against him by other parents of children living on the base.
This was confirmed to me by retired Canadian Forces Warrant Officer Frederick R. Cunningham on November 27th, 2011.
According to Peter’s father Jack, two military police officers came to Jack’s PMQ and questioned Peter in the kitchen. Peter quickly told Sgt. Mossman and Sgt. Clark about Captain Father Angus McRae.
This was confirmed to me when Sgt. Tenaschuk read to me the contents of CFSIU DS 120-10-80 before I requested my own copy from DND in an Access to Information Request.
May 12th 1980 is when base security officer Captain David Pilling requested the CFSIU investigate Captain McRae for “Acts of Homosexuality”.Item #2 makes clear what Captain Pilling wanted Captain McRae investigated for.
How much of a hangup did the Canadian Armed Forces have on “homosexuality”?
HomosexualityHomosexualityHomosexualityHomosexualityHomosexualityHomosexualityHomosexualityHomosexualityThe military was obviously concerned about “homosexuality”
As you can see from the gallery above “homosexuality” gets mentioned quite frequently. Not seen anywhere in these documents is “sexually abuse” or “sexually assault”. The word “victims” only shows up twice in the entire court martial.
The Canadian Armed Forces considered the children that Captain McRae was plying with beer and wine to be “homosexuals” as well.
None of us were victims.
We were all willing participants.
We were all homosexuals.
The 54 year old padre, the 14 year old altar boy / babysitter, and all of their victims.
We were ALL homosexuals in the eyes of the Canadian Armed Forces.
This is why I was involved with Captain Terry Totzke for 2-1/2 years from age 9 to age 11.
He didn’t care in the least that my home was dysfunctional, or that I was suffering from major depression or severe anxiety. He obviously didn’t care in the least that my father took no responsibility for his own family and always blamed others for the issues with his family.
No, Captain Totzke was concerned that I had shown signs of being a homosexual on CFB Namao and that homosexuality was a mental illness.
I wonder how many other kids from CFB Namao were involved with military social workers who were convinced that they were not victims of a 54 year old officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, but were instead homosexuals.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely nothing against homosexuals. I even considered myself to be one. Now, knowing what I know about the past, I consider myself to be nothing. Captain Totzke and his “therapy” took any orientation I may have had away from me. But it pisses me off to no extent that the Canadian Armed Forces were so willing to pass off “child sexual abuse” as “homosexuality”.
It upsets me to think that the Canadian Armed Forces thought that the best way to help me get over the events of CFB Namao was to accuse me of being a homosexual when I was 8 years old.
And I can only wonder how many of the other victims of Captain McRae would go on to commit suicide or attempt suicide over the years.
The destruction of evidence by the CFNIS is nothing new to me.
There was a recent story in the Ottawa Citizen by David Pugliese. It had to do with the CFNIS being ordered by a commanding officer who wasn’t even in the military police hierarchy ordering the destruction of evidence in a CFNIS investigation. Due to the chain of command structure within the Canadian Armed Forces, the CFNIS had no choice but to comply with the order.
Now, if you’ve been following this blog, or my other blog at http://cfbnamao.ca you understand that I’ve been very leery of the claim by the Canadian Armed Forces that the CFNIS are “outside of the chain of command”.
During the investigation of my complaint against Peter, my babysitter from Canadian Forces Base Namao, there were many questionable issues with the investigation, but none so alarming as what happened on May 3rd and May 4th during my interactions with CFNIS investigator Mcpl Christian Cyr.
On May 3rd, 2011, just before lunch, Mcpl Cyr called me and left me a message on my phone to call him back immediately.
When I called him back, Cyr kept pressing me to understand that Peter was only 12 or 13 in the spring of 1980. However, as we all know, Peter was born in June of 1965.
The funny thing is, Peter’s CPIC file would have his correct date of birth, which is in June of 1965. The only place that Peter’s age is misstated is in the CFSIU transcript.
And, there’s no way that Peter was under the age of 14 at the time of McRae’s court martial. The Canadian Forces could only conduct a court martial for Gross Indecency and Indecent assault if the victim was over the age of consent, which was 14 in 1980. If the Canadian Forces wanted to try Captain McRae for gross indecency and indecent assault against children under the age of 14, the CF would have had to hand this case over to the civilian courts.
Near what should have been the end of the phone call, Mcpl Cyr just blurted out the matter of Captain Father Angus McRae. I broke down and lost my composure when he mentioned that the base chaplain had been arrested and charged with molesting children during the same period of time that I was accusing Peter of molesting myself and my brother.
Further, I told Mcpl Cyr about the five visits to the living quarters at the chapel in which Peter would escort me over from different parts of the base and that I never remembered anything after the sickly sweet grape juice. I don’t remember leaving the chapel. And I don’t remember how I got back home.
I had to leave work early as I was sickened and nauseated by what I discovered when I did a simple Google search for “CFB Namao Molesting Priest” on one of the computers at work.
When I got home from work I did some more searching for information on McRae.
I sent off a pair of emails that evening to Mcpl Cyr.
First email sent to CyrOur Lady of Loreto Chapel Second email to CyrEmails that I sent to Mcpl Cyr after he called me at workThese are Mcpl Cyr’s notes of the telephone conversationThis is the SAMPIS record of Mcpl Cyr’s interaction with me.
It should be noted from above that the first item #4 is incorrect. I told Mcpl Cyr that I remembered 5 visits that Peter had taken me on over to the chapel to see Captain McRae. All of the five visits ended with what I remembered as being a “sickly sweet grape juice”. I told Mcpl Cyr that I didn’t remember anything after the “grape juice”, not even how I got home from the chapel.
Just as an aside, and for the record. In October of 2020 with the assistance of Ottawa Citizen and Defence Watch writer David Pugliese, the DND and the Minister of National Defence conceded in their fight to keep Captain McRae’s Court Martial Transcripts away from me.
According to the Military Police Complaints Commission, the CFNIS had access to these court martial records as well as the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980.
Why is this important?
Warrant Officer Frederick Cunningham being examined during Captain McRae’s Court Martial
Me. The fucker gave me wine.
I wouldn’t learn until 2013 when I received the Certified Tribunal Records from the Military Police Complaints Commission that Mcpl Cyr had been creative with what I told him, and he also failed to mention the receipt of my emails in his notebooks or occurrence reports.
Cyr does a Google Search
So here, Mcpl Cyr does a Google search for an exact phrase that I searched for the day previous which I mentioned in an email that he fails to indicate that he received.
On the morning of May 4th, 2011 I called Mcpl Cyr and told him more information about the rectory.
Call #3 was the call I made to Mcpl Cyr on May 3rd, 2011 Call #6 was the call I made to Mcpl Cyr on May 4th, 2011
It was during this phone call that Mcpl Cyr informed me that there never was a rectory at the chapel, and that the chapel that I had indicated on my email was a new chapel, the chapel that was on the base when I lived there in ’79 to ’80 was in a different place. He also said that the padre never lived on the base. This phone call is not mentioned anywhere in his log book or his SAMPIS report.
Well, the blueprints for Our Lady or Loreto Chapel show the rectory.
The red circle highlights the Rectory. The dates on these drawings are hard to make out, but the blueprints were drawn for The Royal Canadian Air Force HQ. The RCAF ceased to exist in 1968.RectoryRectoryRectoryRectoryRectoryIn Captain McRae’s court martial transcript, there are 33 mentions of “RECTORY”
See the CFNIS had Captain McRae’s court martial transcript. The CFNIS had the CFSIU investigation paperwork. In that paperwork was this document from McRae’s Court Martial transcript.
Angus McRae’s admission to the Catholic Church that he had been committing “homosexual acts” with several minors over the past couple of years.
Peter was the main witness for the prosecution. Peter’s testimony is completely blanked out in Captain McRae’s court martial transcript. However, the Military Police Complaints Commission was kind enough to summarize how Peter came to be involved with the prosecution of Captain McRae.
In the MPCC final report, the MPCC indicates that the court martial transcripts indicate this about Mr. X Mr. X is Peter, my babysitter.
Peter was the only boy that Captain McRae was actually charged with abusing, even though the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit knew in 1980 that he had been molesting more than just Peter.
In 2011 the CFNIS knew.
In 2011 the Provost Marshal knew.
In 2011 the Judge Advocate General would have known.
In 2011 the Vice Chief of Defence staff would have known.
In 2011 the Chief of Defence Staff would have known.
In 2011 the office of the Minister of National Defence would have know.
As soon as the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team transferred my complaint against Peter from the Edmonton Police Service to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service the CFNIS would have known who Peter was and what risk my complaint against Peter posed to the Canadian Armed Forces.
And this is why ANY mention of Captain Father Angus McRae was removed from the CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754.
Someone up the chain of command had made the decision that my complaint against Peter was to go absolutely no where.
The knew the liability risk that this would pose if a connection was made between myself, Peter, and Captain Father Angus McRae.
This is why I fully believe that my father was encouraged to “forget” that his mother was raising my brother and I. There could be absolutely no way of linking Peter to us, especially not in the authority roll as our babysitter.
When I went to Federal Court in 2013 asking for the court to quash the findings of the 2012 MPCC review the Attorney General of Canada argued that the CFNIS were correct to strike any mention of Captain McRae from CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 as my complaint had been against Peter S. and not Captain McRae. The Justice hearing my matter agreed with the Attorney General on this point.
I’ll tell you first hand, this lunacy, and this subterfuge is enough to drive a sane person mad.
My father wasn’t a drunk asshole with rage issues, I was just too sensitive.
I wasn’t having psychiatric issues due to the abuse and the conversion therapy, I was just acting up to get attention.
Later in life, when I tried to receive justice for what had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao I was accused of lying. I was accused of making things up, of blowing things out or proportion. The Minister of National Defence himself accused me of playing games and having angles.
Throughout the CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 I was told time and time again that P.S. couldn’t have done what I accused him of, I was told time and time again that there was no fire at PMQ #26 on 12th Street. I was told that the base chapel was in a different location. I was told that I couldn’t have been molested in the base chapel by Captain McRae as the chapel didn’t have a rectory.
On May 3rd, 2011 and May 4th 2011 I sent Master Corporal Christian Cyr some emails that detailed the chapel and other places on the base. Not a single one of these fucking emails was included in the investigation. It’s like they magically disappeared. But I know that Cyr received these emails as he used a certain phrase from one of my emails in one of his reports.
When I got my hands on the Certified Tribunal Records from the Military Police Complaints Commission, I was fucking horrified.
I had submitted my foster care records to the CFNIS in August of 2011 to bolster the fact that there was no on at home that my brother or I could have told about the abuse.
Instead the CFNIS focused on a paragraph or two that said that I was emotionally disturbed and causing trouble.
The CFNIS ignored the fact that my foster care records said that it was our grandmother raising my brother and I on base and that grandma was invited to live with us in 1977 and didn’t move out until 1981.
This was important as my father denied ever hiring a babysitter. Of course he’d deny it, it wasn’t him that hired the babysitter, it was his mother.
I just can’t figure out if it was Richard that erased his mother from our house or if the CFNIS suggested that he not mention his mother as that would help ensure that P.S. could not be indicated as our babysitter, thereby casting further doubt on my allegations against P.S.
The CFNIS ignored the part of my foster care records that said that my brother and I viewed grandma as far too authoritarian and strict. They completely skipped the part where I told the psychologist that I was going to kill myself if grandma didn’t leave the house.
The CFNIS ignored the psychological report of the psychologist hired by the Canadian Forces that said that my father accepted no responsibility for his family, blamed others for the problems with his family, expected others to solve the problems with his family, that he denied any knowledge of his kids having problems, blamed his mother for hiding those problems from him.
So, in the end, Richard died in 2017 without ever having to own up to the horrific fucking hell he put me through to cover for his own irresponsibility that led to my brother and I being sexually abused for 1-1/2 years on CFB Namao.
What’s even worse is that the CFNIS had in its possession the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts which indicated that the Military Police in 1980 knew that P.S. was molesting children on the base.
What’s even worse is that the CFNIS had done CPIC checks on P.S. and found that he was charged and convicted in 1x in 1982, 1x in 1984, 2x in 1985 for the sexual abuse of children.
“Mr. Bees, we just couldn’t find anything that would indicate that P.S. was capable of what you accused him of”
Why did the CFNIS spin the investigation the way they did?
Why did the Canadian Forces, the Provost Marshal, and the CFNIS go out of their way to protect a multi-time convicted child molested?
Liability.
Someone up the Chain of Command made the decision that I was never to be linked to Captain Father Angus McRae via P.S.
If P.S. abused my brother and I as a result of the abuse, the grooming, or the instructions that P.S. received from Captain Father Angus McRae, there would be the possibility of compensation.
After all, Captain McRae was a member of the regular force, he was living on a secure defence establishment in housing provided to him by the Canadian Armed Forces, as he was a regular force member he was subject to the Code of Service discipline 24/7, and I lived on the same defence establishment that the Canadian Forces were supposed to provide security for.
If my matter had made it to court and through discovery it was learnt that Captain McRae had molested many other children on CFB Namao, CFS Holberg, CFB Portage La Prairie, and CFB Kingston, where would the liability end?
If my matter had made ripples in the media, how many other kids that had been abused on the bases across Canada would start coming forward.
BOBBIE YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT! THE CFNIS CANNOT BE COMPROMISED! THE CFNIS INVESTIGATORS ARE OUTSIDE OF CHAIN OF COMMAND INFLUENCE!
Yeah?
You sure about that?
Well, as it turns out a Commanding Officer outside of the CFNIS ordered the CFNIS to destroy evidence and the fucking CFNIS complied. It has to. It has no fucking choice. Section 83 of the National Defence Act says that every person subject to the Code of Service Discipline WILL obey the LAWFUL command of a superior officer. There are no fucking exceptions for the investigators within the CFNIS.
Section 18.5 says that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can direct the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS.
Let’s quit fucking pretending that the CFNIS are real police.
Especially not on the order of some fucking jerk-off commanding officer.
The Canadian Fucking Forces just keep getting worse and worse as the days go by as more shit floats to the top of the swamp.
But Bobbie, doesn’t this make you happy?
Why the fuck would it make me happy?
I counted on these fucking assholes to keep me safe as a child when I lived on their fucking defence establishments.
I counted on these fucking assholes to ensure that justice was carried out and that every attempt was made to make me whole again after the fucking abuse. Instead I got 2-1/2 years of psychological abuse at the hands of military social worker Captain Totzke.
When it became apparent that my father was incapable of looking after me due to his issues, I counted on the Canadian Forces to assist Alberta Social Services with my care, not help my fucking father skip to a different province.
In 2011, when the CFNIS took my matter away from the civilian police, I was counting on the CFNIS to help me escape from a lifetime of being blamed for allowing the babysitter to have molested my younger brother. Instead the fucking worthless CFNIS acted to protect the DND and the CF from civil actions and potential public humiliation had the truth about CFB Namao been made public.
I was told by the Military Police Complaints Commission that there was no way possible for the Canadian Forces to interfere with a CFNIS investigation, that the CFNIS were free from Chain of Command influence.
Well, as it turns out, this is all bullshit and fucking lies.
Bullshit and fucking lies is all the Canadian Armed Forces seem to be good at.
Telling the fucking truth seems to be far beyond the abilities of the Canadian Armed Forces.
So, if you’re still trying to grasp why I want to die via M.A.i.D. after M.A.i.D. for psychiatric issues becomes law in 2023, this is why.
My whole fucking life has been one horrific fucking joke. Everything I knew as a kid was absolute fucking lies. My sexuality was destroyed by Captain Totzke. My mental health and well-being was destroyed by my own father and the Canadia Armed Forces. All for the sake of keeping a fucking secret.
Even if the Minister of National Defence, Anita Anand ekes out a meagre apology, what the fuck is that going to do. It’s not going to bring my father back so that he can apologize and eat humble fucking pie for what he did. It’s not going to undo the abuse at the hands of P.S. or Captain McRae. It’s not going to undo the psychological abuse I suffered under Captain Totzke.
Knowing what I’ve learnt about the Canadian Armed Forces and their knack for bald-faced lying and duplicity makes anything the Canadian Forces, the Department of National Defence, or the Minister of National Defence absolutely worthless.
Why would any person in their right mind want to willingly live in complete torment knowing what I know and seeing what I’ve seen.
This is the reason why M.A.i.D. has such a powerful allure for me.
I’ve already been through enough in life.
Suicide will never be an answer for me. Why should I have to suffer more in the end? Why should I have to risk surviving a botched attempt?
No amount of counselling, talking, arts therapy, magical healing crystals, or chakras will undo what was done.
My bed has been made. Now I have to lay in it. Sucks that the housekeeper making my bed was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
The peaceful exit of M.A.i.D. is what I look forward to.
No pain. No suffering. No more depression. No more anxiety. No more torment. No more lies.
And that’s probably for the better. Peering too deep into the black pit of his soul would probably drive anyone insane.
I don’t remember Richard very much from CFB Shearwater. I vaguely remember a motorcycle ride.
I remember some sort of string controlled model airplane that he had.
I remember him walking to work once in the fog.
But that’s it.
I remember him on CFB Summerside, but again, not that much.
I know that Marie drove him to the airfield at the base a couple of times when he had to go away on training exercises.
I remember my grandmother, and Kimberly Wood, and even my mother before she left, but I don’t ever remember Richard except for when he picked me up from the hospital after my bicycle incident in July of 1978.
I remember he almost set the PMQ on fire once when he left the kettle on the stove and he fell asleep. The kettle melted and the handle started burning.
I remember him wanting to build me a wooden go-cart but that came to an end the night he came home drunk and went to the basement.
CFB Namao, he was rarely around. Just like on Summerside, it was his mother raising us, not him. He would occasionally stop in and take my brother and I down to Wetaskiwin to visit his girlfriend Vicki. When Richard started seeing Sue around the summer of 1979 he would occasionally pick my brother and I up and we’d go over and stay at Sue’s place for the weekend.
But again, I didn’t see much of Richard until he moved back in to the house in August / September of 1980. He brought Sue to live with him as well at this point.
I remember thinking after Richard had moved back in with us that my real father had died in a military exercise and that the Canadian Forces had replaced my real father with an imposter hoping that I wouldn’t notice.
He was so very different from what I had remembered before. Also, he was around a lot more now than he had ever been before.
In October of 1980 we were moved 10km down the road from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach at taxpayer expense .
By the summer of 1981 Grandma had moved off base and moved into her own apartment on 107th Ave and 111th street.
Richard still was going away on training exercises and dumping my brother and I on Sue’s lap.
Things under Richard’s domain were not all that pleasant.
Richard was the ultimate control freak. And as my brother was 7 and I was 10, nothing was ever going to be as perfect as he wanted it.
It got to the point that Richard put my brother and I in the base daycare centre before we’d go to school. Richard would wake us up in the morning, we’d get dressed, have breakfast, and then we’d have to go sit in the day care centre until it was time to go to school.
If you ever want to get tormented and teased and get the shit beaten out of you, try being a 10 year old military dependent living on a military base and going to a day care centre for toddlers on a military base.
After school was just as bad. We weren’t allowed to have keys for the house. So after school we’d have to stand on the front porch of the PMQ and wait. School would get out at 15:00. Richard would get off work at around 16:30. Winter time in Edmonton could get really fucking cold. And no, we could’t go over to other people’s PMQs and wait there. We had to be standing on the porch when he got home.
One winter day my brother decided that he had enough of freezing, so he went and kicked one of the basement windows in and then climbed down into the PMQ. Richard went through the fucking roof. I can’t remember what he did to my brother, but it was my fault for not keeping an eye on my brother and letting my brother do something that he could have hurt himself doing.
“The boys did not seem to show fear” Yeah, that’s always a good thing. Yep. Mr. Gill sure didn’t have any problem disciplining me or my brother. And yes, when Richard made a decision YOU DID NOT question it.
Yeah, it was funny but in a sad funny way how Richard was. Other kids on base could “whine” or “cry” and usually get “their way” with their parents. But when it came to Richard. His decisions were final. And any questioning his decisions were taken as a direct challenge to his authority. And you did not challenge his authority. Period.
Not overly warm.
Yeah, that was Richard. “Not overly warm”.
When I tried to track down my Uncle Doug in 2011 I made contact with his widow Yvonne. She said almost exactly thing this social service worker had to say. Richard could appear to be friendly. And he would help out. But you had to stay out of his way while he was helping or he would explode in anger.
Bob Becker said the same thing. Ed Blaha said the same thing. Almost anyone who met my father would say the same thing.
He was “pleasant”, he “seemed nice”, but he seemed to be troubled by something.
In 2011 he told the CFNIS that I was nothing but trouble in school. But in 1982 he told Alberta Social Services that he wasn’t aware of my brother or I having any trouble in school as the school never tells him anything.
More than likely it was he didn’t want to hear what the schools had to say.
Richard kept my brother and I not out of love but out of a desire to “control the costs”. His friends were always asking him why if having kids was so upsetting to him why he didn’t ship us off to live with our mother. His answer was always that as long as we lived under his roof, he could control the costs, but if we went to live with our mother he’d have to sign his paycheque over to her, and that was not going to happen.
You’ll also notice that it’s not my imagination. It’s right there in black and white. Richard had abdicated his parenting role for my brother and dropped my brother in my lap.
This is how Richard was. Richard wasn’t going to wear my brother. Any issues that my brother had obviously weren’t due to Richard’s complete lack of parenting skills. No, it was painfully obvious that any issues that my brother had were due to me not looking after or raising my brother properly.
Swimming, bowling, hockey, cubs, beavers
When I examined Richard for Federal Court in 2013 he said the reason that my brother and I were never involved in activities after we moved from CFB Griesbach was because I showed no interest.
Again, here I am showing absolutely no interest and it’s obvious that I not getting anything.
Here he is telling social services that we were involved with “swimming, bowling, hockey, cubs, beavers” but that we aren’t involved with these any longer as he “doesn’t feel the boys get enough from them”.
What a fucking load of shit.
When I lived on CFB Namao, Grandma had me in bowling, beavers, swimming, basketball, and hockey. The fees for military dependents on base were minimal, but the parents still had to buy the equipment. My grandmother would use her CPP cheques to pay the fees and buy some of the equipment. She would force Richard to pay for the rest.
Grandma is the one who took me swimming. She’d take me to bowling. She’d take me to basket ball. She’d take me to hockey. She would always coax one of the other fathers to tie up my skates for me as her hands were too arthritic.
The reason why we didn’t do these sports on CFB Griesbach was twofold.
First, the arena, the pool, and the bowling centre were up on CFB Namao. Richard was not going to waste his time driving up to the other base and then waiting around.
And as Richard had told me in the fall of 1982 when Westfield was going on a swimming trip to the Kinsmen Sports Centre for a swimming trip and he refused to sign the permission slip “There will be other naked boys around and you won’t be able to control yourself”.
That’s why there were no more sports activities like swimming, or bowling, or hockey……. Richard didn’t want me becoming aroused around other naked boys like I had done with P.S. on CFB Namao.
Which make it even more painful every time I look at his 2011 statement that he gave to the CFNIS when he professed he knew nothing about the babysitter P.S. from CFB Namao.
Richard made my life a living fucking hell because of what P.S. had done to me and my brother on CFB Namao. Or more specifically, what I had enjoyed doing with the babysitter and what I had allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother.
Yeah. As a kid I had no fucking idea of what was going on. If I did something wrong I’d get a spanking, or sent to my room without supper, or grounded. And if my brother did something wrong I’d get a spanking, or sent to my room without supper, or grounded. There was absolutely no fucking winning no matter what.
P.S. was twice my age. There was nothing I could do to stop P.S.. But that’s not the way that Richard saw things.
As I said in a previous post. I was Richard’s scapegoat. Anything that went wrong with my brother or with me was obviously my fault. And he needed a scapegoat as he sure as he couldn’t take responsibility.
All I need are horns and a red ribbon in my hair.
When it was his responsibility to look after us, school wasn’t telling him anything, his mother wasn’t telling him anything, social services wasn’t telling him anything, the psychiatrists and psychologists weren’t telling him anything.
When my brother got into to trouble. It wasn’t Richard’s responsibility. Richard couldn’t take responsibility. So the responsibility had to become someone else’s responsibility.
I fully understand this now. Fuck, I fully understood this when I got my social service / foster care paperwork in 2011.
But understanding this does nothing to erase the memories of the beltings, the backhands, the open handed slaps, the shoves to the ground, the hours and hours of frustrated crying not understanding what the fuck it was that I was doing wrong.
From Home Visit in November of 1981
Yeah, this would be an understatement. My brother and I didn’t like each other much. And I don’t think Richard really cared.
I was suffering from major depression and severe anxiety and receiving no treatment for either. I was still dealing with the fallout from CFB Namao. And here I am at age 10 being held responsible to raise a 6 year old who was having his own issues due to CFB Namao and the dysfunctional household that we were living in.
The rivalry between us had become so extreme that the North York Board of Education had to separate us and send us to other school.
In the school year of 1983-1984 my brother and I went to Sheppard Public. We had to be separated. I stayed at Sheppard, my brother went to Downsview Public. This report was written in September of 1984 when I started Gr. 7 at Elia Jr. High.
And Richard gave not the single slightest fuck whatsoever.
Richard was controlling the costs.
Richard wasn’t signing his paycheque over to “that bitch”.
That’s all that mattered to Richard.
“I like responsibility”
It’s not so much that I liked responsibility. I just liked being away from Richard. I liked not being anywhere near Sue. I liked not having to be in their house. I liked the fact that the owner of the pet shop appreciated the work I was doing. I liked the fact that the owner of the store never once yelled at me or hit me. I liked having little animals to play with. I liked being able to buy a hot dog at the Julius stand in the mall or go over and get a cheese burger and fries at the McDonalds in the parking lot. I liked being able to play arcade games at the Wizard’s Castle in the mall.
It’s not that I liked responsibility. It’s that I found somethings that were sorely missing from my life at home. Respect. Trust. Admiration.
I guess that’s one thing that always irked Richard, ’cause he sure mentions it a lot in the social service records. I “admire” my mother. Fuck, this must have made him absolutely sick. After everything that he was doing for me that I still had the audacity to “admire” or “adore” my mother, the women who in his words was a “miserable bitch” that “ran away” and “abandoned” him and left him with her kids to raise.
When Sue first moved in with us she did a few good things. We stopped going to church with Grandma on Sundays. Sue said that if we didn’t want to go to church we didn’t have to. The Dutch have never been very religious. The Netherlands has always been a highly irreligious country.
Sue also put her foot down with Grandma’s drinking and Richard’s drinking. I know that Grandma’s drinking caused a lot of tension between her and Sue.
Sue also said at the start that she was going to get Richard to stop hitting us. In the end Richard’s ability to play the victim and to blame the actual victims got Sue hitting my brother and I. To be very clear, she was never anywhere near as violent as Richard could be.
She was more of the flyswatter type. And she was also good with pinching.
I think the only reason that Sue started hitting my brother and I was out of frustration and inexperience. At the time she would have been in her very early twenties. I had always joked that she was the older sister that I had never asked for.
Her and I were so close in age that one day Sue had me on the ground on my back in the front yard and she was slapping me. The female military police officer that lived in PMQ #69 came over and grabbed Sue and pulled her off of me. The female MP told Sue that if she ever caught her fighting with her little brother that she was going to tell our father. Yeah, the MP thought that Sue was my older sister.
On more than one time Sue referred to me as a “retard”.
And due to my untreated major depression I was prone to fits of crying. On more than one occasion she would tell me that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress.
I don’t hold any grudges against her.
She was a kid herself back in the early ’80s.
She had fallen in love with a man that had some very major psychological issues.
The man she fell in love with had children that he refused to accept responsibility for.
Both of the kids that she was expected to look after had “secrets” that Richard and the Canadian Armed Forces were doing everything they could to keep hidden. I often wonder what she would have done if she had known that my brother and I had been sexually abused by our babysitter P.S. and at least in my case Captain Father Angus McRae for 1-1/2 years.
The only person that I blame for back then is Richard.
He could have looked after these issues had he been 1/4 of the man he pretended to be.
But to be honest, it wasn’t just Richard that was to blame.
The Canadian Armed Forces also share a lot of the blame.
Men like my father were a dime-a-dozen in the Canadian Forces. Men who couldn’t fit into society anywhere else. They fit into the military. As long as guys like my father were willing to put their lives on the line for the country, the Canadian Forces was more than willing to turn a blind eye to what went on in the PMQ patches. A guy like my father could never have survived out on civvy street. He needed to be amongst other guys like him. Other guys who maybe drank too much, or hit their wives a little too often, or who maybe disciplined their kids a little too frequently.
My father wasn’t the only alky with rage issues and some form of untreated military related psychological trauma.
There were others.
There were many others.
In the end, there is no fixing or undoing the damage that Richard created.
I honestly don’t believe that at any point in time the mental health wellbeing of military dependents has ever been a concern of the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.
Sure, the DND, the CF, and the Minister of National Defence will bloviate about the Military Family Resource Centre and other meaningless programs that the DND and the CF have instituted over the years.
But if they really cared, why does the CF and the DND draw such a hard line in the sand as to which dependents they will support, and which dependents can piss off and go get bent?
In my day as a military dependent the maximum age for a dependent to live in a PMQ on base was 18. The only way you could remain living in the PMQ after your 19th birthday was if you were mentally disabled or if you were attending an institution of higher learning. But even if you were attending an institution of higher learning 24 was the maximum age that you could live in a PMQ on base.
In my day dependents were officially referred to as “D.F.& E.” which means “Dependents, Furniture, and Effects”. The Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces, which only existed as of 1999, was so taken back by this callousness that they kept asking DND to stop dehumanizing the military dependents and to stop referring to them as D.F.& E. which implied that military dependents were of no more worth than the service member’s furniture.
As a kid, there were times when kids would just stop coming to school. Or kids would just one day leave the base. Never to be seen again. And this wasn’t due to postings. If it was a posting nine times out of ten the posting would occur between late June and early September. These absences were often due to their serving parent dying. Training exercise, workplace incident, health issue, it didn’t matter. PMQs could only be rented to active service members. Deceased persons cannot serve in the military. So off the base the family went.
It was rare that a base commander would intervene and make an exception, because once you’ve made one exception how can you not make another? And allowing the deceased member’s family to remain on base in a PMQ could prove to be an issue for DND and the CF. DND and the CF had fought numerous court battles over the PMQs with regard to civilian family courts granting the non-serving spouse possession of the PMQ in which to raise their children. DND would obviously have an issue on their hands if non-serving spouses were suddenly taking possession of PMQs in the PMQ patches. And schools on base prior to 1994 were run by DND and the CF. These schools were exclusively for the children of active service members. How long was the DND and the CF supposed to support the education of a deceased member’s children?
So, back in my day once a service member died, that was it, the DND and the CF washed their hands of the service member’s dependents.
There was no support.
There was no aftercare.
There was nothing.
We weren’t eligible for social programs from the provinces related to a serving parent’s death as the provinces considered that the be the responsibility of the DND and the CF.
Living on base wasn’t as easy as it’s often portrayed.
The children of dysfunctional families were often tormented and ostracized by their peers. When you live in a regimented community like a military PMQ patch you either conform or you will have trouble.
Dysfunctional parents, like my father, could easily use the Canadian Forces to stay one step ahead of civilian social services. Sure civilian parents could move to a different town, but at great expense. In the Canadian Forces your dysfunctional parent’s moving and travel expenses were covered.
Back in my day the military social workers were more concerned with containing problems. But again, that’s the way the military functioned back then and still functions to this day.
The rank of your serving parent had its privilege, especially if your serving parent was an officer or above. Anybody who says that this wasn’t the case is absolutely full of shit.
There was no way that the base military police were going to go after the son of a Lt. Col. for beating the crap out of the son of a Corporal. No Warrant Officer MP is going to risk getting transferred to CFS Alert over two kids having a donnybrook out behind the rec centre. And yes, this still holds true to today. The provost marshal himself even said that he would never investigate a senior officer of the military.
Sure, Simon Trudeau was talking about investigating his commanding officer. However, if his commanding officer is good buddies with a lower ranking officer, and the Trudeau’s commander doesn’t want the PM to investigate the other lower ranking officer who is the Trudeau to argue with a lawful command from his superior?
Don’t forget, the Canadian Forces didn’t have a Provost Marshal from about 1968 until the office of the Provost Marshal was stood up again in 1998. Prior to that, the base military police and even the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were under the influence of the local chain of command. Yes, when the CFNIS was created in 1998 along with the Provost Marshal being stood back up, the idea was that the CFNIS and the base military police would operate without chain of command influence. That’s all fine and dandy, but someone forget to rewrite the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders to exempt members of the CFNIS and the base military police from section 83 of the National Defence Act.
The Provost Marshal was stood up in 1998 as a result of the findings of the Somalia Inquiry. The Inquiry found that the base military police and the CFSIU were ripe for interference from the local chain of command and that superior officers would often put their own parochial interests above any semblance of justice. So it was suggested that the command of the base military police and the new CFNIS be transferred to the command of the freshly stood up Provost Marshal who would be of significant enough rank that they would be immune from chain of command influence. That hasn’t worked out.
How many wife beatings or child beatings were the base MPs and the CFSIU told to ignore and look away from?
And as I said, things were far worse back in my day as a military dependent.
As retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham told the CFNIS in 2016 when he was interviewed, the Assistant Judge Advocate General threw Cunningham and the CFSIU “to the dogs” in 1980 during the Captain Father Angus McRae Investigation and subsequent court martial.
When I spoke with retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011 he said that it was the “brass” that made the decision to limit the number of charges brought against Captain McRae and that the military police had “many, many more” charges ready to go against McRae but that the “brass” wasn’t going for it, and that the military police tried to move the Captain McRae matter into the civilian system, but again the brass wasn’t going for it.
Most of Captain McRae’s victims were under 14 years of age. In 1980 the age of consent at which a child could agree to have sex with an adult was 14. P.S. was the only boy over the age of 14. If the Canadian Forces had insisted on prosecuting Captain McRae for abusing the children under the age of consent, this whole matter would have had to have been moved into the civilian courts. For obvious reasons the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces were not going to ever agree to this as in the civilian courts the DND and the CF would be hard pressed to “throw a veil of secrecy” over the trial and the evidence. A trial and evidence that would have shown that Captain McRae sexually abused over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and an untold number of children on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
So the fact that the “brass” and the “AJAG” were able to insert themselves into a criminal matter again shows that rank in the Canadian Armed Forces carries a significant amount of weight.
And according to retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham it was also the Assistant Judge Advocate General that made the decision to not call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S. under the false assumption that P.S. was only 12 years old in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. turned 15 on June 20th, 1980. And as the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU paperwork indicate, it was the abuse of young children on base that brought P.S. to the attention of the base military police and it was that attention that brought Captin McRae to the attention of the CFSIU.
Again, the base military police and the CFSIU were not independent. They followed the whims and desires of the chain of command.
That’s why spousal abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
That’s why child sexual abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
That’s why child physical and mental abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
Far too much chain of command influence and far too many parochial decisions.
Most of the children from CFB Namao never received any form of meaningful help. Some went on to have troubled lives. Some have attempted suicide. Some have committed suicide. And that’s only on CFB Namao. What about the other bases that McRae was at?
In 2010 retired Brigadier General Roger Bazin was investigated by the CFSIU for having sexually abused a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. How many other kids, now adults, are out there that may have been abused on Canadian Forces Base Borden who have never come forward due to not knowing their abuser’s name? How many other former military dependents have never come forward because they were posted around so many times that they can’t remember on which base the abuse occurred on?
Our attempts at suicide and our suicides will never be recorded as being military related. Our deaths and our psychological trauma will always be written off as having been due to something unrelated to our time living on base as children.
When I die it won’t be recorded as being the end result of untreated childhood sexual trauma.
My death will simply be recorded as someone who sought Medical Assistance in Dying due to psychological issues caused by childhood trauma.
And that’s it.
There will be no mention of Captain Father Angus McRae;
There will be no mention of Captain Terry Totzke;
There will be no mention of Colonel Dan Munro
There will be no mention of AJAG J.D. Boan.
The media won’t really show any interest, because what’s interesting about one person seeking M.A.i.D. to get away from their demons?
Between 1950 and today, how many military dependents have attempted suicide, committed suicide, or have wound up with profound psychological issues due to the childhood spent living on military bases?
No one knows.
And the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces would love for it to stay this way.
In the past there have been murmurs and burbles of organizations noticing that children of service members or adult who once were children living on base are committing suicide.
However, sadly this latest research falls well short of other research projects in the past.
The common flaw being that these researchers overlook events that occurred on base and how these events impacted the children living on the bases. This current research looks at how events that impacted service members might lead to family members of the service member committing suicide. For example, if a serving member of the Canadian Forces commits suicide and then their parent commits suicide.
However, what this research seems to completely overlook and omit are suicides or attempted suicides that came about due to events that occurred on the base that the military dependent endured first hand and received little or no support after the event or received inappropriate support.
Like it or not, children were sexually abused on base, children were physically abused on base, children were neglected on base, children were ostracized on base, children couldn’t cope with postings, children couldn’t cope with constantly losing friends, children had to deal with serving parents that had issues made worse by military service such as excessive drinking, anger outbursts, and untreated PTSD.
Persons who lived on base between the 1950s and the 2000’s grew up in a very homophobic, LGBTQ phobic, misogynistic, environment in which psychological issues were to be hidden away and not discussed.
Is it any wonder that no one in the DND, the CF, or even the media really wants to tackle this subject.
Kids who committed suicide already will forever be silent, so the DND and the CF don’t have to worry about them ever talking.
Kids who were 8 years old on base in 1950 are now in their late 70s. They won’t be around for much longer.
Kids who were 8 years old on the bases in 1970 are now pushing 58. Even if the CF and the DND were serious about tackling issues that may have effected these persons, by the time DND and the CF have finished the requisite number of committee meetings these people will easily be in their late 60s and early 70s.
So far as the Government of Canada, the DND, and the CF are concerned, military dependents were never the responsibility of the DND or the CF. As such, they’re more than willing to play the waiting game until we’re all gone.
I’ll be gone in about 2 years. And that’ll be one less issue for the DND and the CF to worry about.
I was recently told by a distant relation of the family that one of the reasons that the media may be reluctant to touch my story is because of what I desire no matter the outcome.
There has to be a good reason why the media won’t touch it.
The Canadian Armed Forces have come out and admitted that there was a problem with sexual assaults in the military for ages.
The Canadian Armed Forces have admitted that victims of sexual assault in the military were often disbelieved, humiliated, ostracized, and blamed for their own misfortune.
The Canadian Armed Forces have agreed that the Military Police, the CFSIU, and the CFNIS were often ill equipped and ill prepared to deal with sexual assault.
As I’ve said before, I view suicide as the outcome of an irrational heat-of-the-moment decision.
Medical assistance in dying is something completely different. You have to pass psychological tests and you have to be approved by a panel before you are allowed to receive a prescription for the procedure. There is no body for a caretaker or random stranger to discover. There generally are no unanswered questions. The death is supervised. The body is removed and disposed of after death is confirmed.
You’d think that the Canadian press would be very interested to hear about a matter in which recently released documents verify that the Canadian Armed Forces knew in 1980 the true extent of Captain McRae’s crimes and that the Canadian Armed Forces knew that Captain McRae had been molesting children on the other bases that he had been stationed at but refused to at the time to investigate those matters or to even offer the victims of Captain McRae any type of counselling or help.
However it looks as if my planned death is scaring the media away.
Nora Loreto recently tweeted that she had information of a police officer that walked into a detachment and then shot themselves dead. There was no news coverage of this.
This has happened recently in Ontario and there is total silence about the circumstances of the death.
Someone on the thread mentioned that a CBSA officer at Pearson International Airport committed suicide, but the media would only say that the officer was found “dead” at the airport.
This happens more often than it reaches the news… I know it was reported once in 2016 that I saw with CBSA: https://t.co/ejJk4LokOB
And as I’ve mentioned in another post, there are a significant number of suicides in British Columbia each and every year.
This is a snapshot of the BC Coroner’s report on Suicide Deaths covering the period of 2008 until 2018.
That’s 6,002 people whom died between 2008 and 2018 that the media have decided don’t exist and never did exist.
What’s scary is that this number only reflects “successful” suicides. Suicide attempts are not included.
Even more interesting is the age group that most frequently commits suicide.
The media always tells us that they’re “saving the children” by not reporting on suicides. Except it’s the 40 to 59 year olds that are committing suicide at the highest rates, not the children.
Why does the media do this?
Is it because the media doesn’t want to encourage copy-cat suicides?
I don’t think that’s entirely true.
I think it’s because the news media would have to open its eyes and realize that the there are a lot of people out there that require help. And the way our society is currently set up, there is no help available for these people and that means that society has failed its most vulnerable.
Even though I’ve only tracked down a few people from CFB Namao that were involved with the CFB Child Sex Abuse Scandal I know of 2 successful suicides, one possible suicide, and 2 attempted suicides related to the Captain Father Angus McRae matter on Canadian Forces Base Namao. That’s five people out of an estimated 25 people that Captain McRae molested on Canadian Forces Base Namao. How many others from CFB Namao did manage to commit suicide that no one knows about? How many kids did Captain McRae molest on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, or Canadian Forces Base Kingston? How many of those kids would go on to commit suicide later in life.
It would be safe to say that I’m not the only one who had a bad reaction to the affairs from CFB Namao. It would also seem to be correct to say that the Canadian Armed Forces didn’t know how to properly deal with the child victims of military sexual assault and that the way in which the Canadian Armed Forces did deal with the child victims of military sexual assault may have actually made the problems far worse due to the military’s penchant for victim blaming.
Maybe the media considers it a waste of time to report on my matter if I’m only going to die in the end anyways.
No.
I think there is such a stigmatism against suicide in our society that there can be no meaningful discussion of any topic when suicide is involved.
See, if I were to have kept my desire to die to myself, then more than likely the media would have reported on my story as they could cleve my eventual death from the CFB Namao sexual abuse scandal.
I could see the eventual reporting of my death:
“Mr. Bees passed away suddenly. There has been no official cause of death released. Mr. Bees if you will remember was the person who brought down the veil of secrecy that had shielded the eyes of the Canadian public from the child sexual abuse scandal that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980.”
But as I’ve said, my death isn’t going to be so that I can make people feel guilty or ashamed. My death isn’t going to be so that I can get back at people. My death isn’t to cause the Canadian Armed Forces to suffer humiliation. My death will not be romantic nor will it be a cause célèbre.
My death will be because I am tired. I am burnt out. My death will be because of my desire to escape from the memories of P.S., Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, my father, a psychologically tormented childhood and adolescence, and a lifetime of confusion, self doubt, self hatred, and regret.
Ideally my death will be a private event with only the physician in attendance. Maybe a friend or two. Hopefully my death will be humane and it will be very quick.
It’s far too late to save me. That die was cast a long time ago. My life has been the consequence of chain of command decisions that were made in May to July of 1980 by officers in the Canadian Armed Forces. And I wasn’t even a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
But it’s not too late to save those who have yet to be abused by trying to ensure that they don’t get abused. It’s also not too late to save those who will no doubt be abused by ensuring that they are believed and not blamed, and that they receive help and treatment in a timely manner instead of humiliation.
And not all of those who are or who will be abused will go on to seek death, but just because they don’t doesn’t mean that their abuse wasn’t painful nor does it mean that they don’t need help.
A police review agency that takes its directions from the agency that runs the police agency that the MPCC reviews.
I’m not going to get too involved with the Military Police Complaints Commission in this blog other than to point out some important findings from the Final Review released in 2020.
After Sgt. Tenaschuk informed me in July of 2018 that the 2nd portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 I gathered up all of my evidence and all of my paperwork. Unlike my 2012 complaint to the MPCC, this time I was aware of what documents I would need and how I would obtain those documents.
During the 2015 to 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation I made sure to audio record phone calls between myself and the investigators. I sent all communications to the CFNIS via email that also went to a cc: address. Important information was sent to the CFNIS via certified courier.
All the stuff that I didn’t do in my first go-round with the MPCC.
I also knew that the MPCC’s hands were tied. The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, by way of the National Defence Act has an extreme amount of control over the MPCC by way of controlling which documents are released to the MPCC and which documents are.
Unlike the Canadian Forces Ombudsman, the MPCC cannot compel DND, the CF, nor the Provost Marshal to hand over documents to the MPCC.
The MPCC did fault the CFNIS for telling the Alberta Government that no crime had occurred when the MPCC found that internal communications within the CFNIS back in 2011 indicated that my complaint against P.S. was in fact FOUNDED. The MPCC said that the CFNIS had erred when it relied on the Alberta Crown to determine if a crime had occurred. The MPCC said the internal communications within the CFNIS had in fact indicated that a crime had occurred but that the Alberta Crown has a very high bar set before it will lay charges. That bar is determined by the age of the offences, the benefit to society by trying those charges, and the cost of trying those charges.
Here are some really interesting pages from the MPCC final report:
Mr. X is my former babysitter, P.S.
What is interesting about this is that the CPIC check doesn’t show this.
P.S. is noted as being 20 years old on August 27th, 1985. This would put his as being 15 years old at the time of Captain McRae’s Court Martial on July 18th, 1980 This would also go along with what and RCMP Constable told me in August of 2012, that P.S was born on June 20th, 1965 and that the boy in Manitoba was only 8 years old.
So, five charges of child sexual assault between 1982 and 1985?
How many children does a child molester usually abuse before they get caught?
X is my former babysitter from CFB NamaoX is P.S., my former babysitter from CFB Namao
Page 13 and Page 14 from the MPCC Final Report are quite interesting.
I initially spoke with Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011 in this conversation he mentioned the following:
P.S. was not 12 or 13 in 1980 as Mcpl Christian Cyr had told me on May 3rd, 2011. P.S. was 15 years old at the time of Captain McRae’s court martial on July 18th, 1980
“There definitely was something wrong with P.S. and he should never have been allowed to babysit children”
It was because of complaints to the base military police about P.S.’s sexual behaviour to younger children that Captain McRae came to be investigated.
Captain McRae was facing charges related for not only molesting P.S., but for molesting a boy named Fred Aitken and one other boy that Cunningham couldn’t name.
At the last minute the “brass” dropped all of the charges related to Fred Aitken and the other boy and as a result of this there was a very serious falling out between P.S. and Fred Aitken with Fred under the false impression that P.S. had stabbed Fred in the back. Cunningham insisted that it was the “brass” that made the decision.
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 Fred Cunningham stated to a CFNIS investigator that the “AJAG threw the CFSIU to the dogs”
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 Fred Cunningham refused to participate in any type of a recorded interview. He would only talk “off record”.
Fred asked me to never mention to anyone what he had told me as he was afraid of getting into trouble as the court martial had been moved in-camera and the evidence sealed and no one was supposed to talk about it.
In December of 2011 I sent a letter to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal detailing some of my conversation with Cunningham. In January of 2012 I received a telephone call from the Provost Marshal himself assuring me that Fred Cunningham didn’t know what he was talking about, that Fred couldn’t have had access to the court martial, and that Fred might be repeating information that he heard second or third hand.
As I would learn in February of 2018 when I received Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit report CFSIU DS 120-10-80, Fred Cunningham was Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham in 1980. He was the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU. And he had been personally tasked by the base security officer Captain David Pilling with investigating Captain McRae for having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with young boys on the base.
Also, this is quite interesting in the sense that it proves that the CFNIS had access to all of this paperwork in 2011. When Mcpl Christian Cyr kept trying to tell me that P.S. was only 12 or 13 at the time of the abuse in 1980, Cyr was obviously going by what was contained in CFSIU DS 120-10-80. So even in 2011 the CFNIS knew full well what P.S. had done.
Again X and Mstr X are P.S., my babysitter from CFB NamaoAgain X is P.S., my babysitter from CFB Nama.X is P.S., my former babysitter from CFB Namao
Well, there you have it. It’s all in Section 80. “From all of this information, there can be little question that, at the very least, base military police were well aware of P.S.’s abuse of other children at the time of the investigation and prosecution of Captain Father McRae. Indeed, it appears to have been P.S.’s behaviour with other younger children, which led the military police’s pursuit of Captain McRae in the first place”. Doesn’t get any plainer that that, does it?
THEY FUCKING KNEW IN 1980 WHAT P.S. WAS DOING.
And yet I’m the piece of shit that allowed P.S. to molest his younger brother. I received 2-1/2 years of conversion therapy at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke. I’m the homosexual that enjoyed what P.S. was doing to me because I let the abuse go on for so long according to Captain Totzke and my father. And you wonder why I so desperately need to die.
Why were they so desperate in 1980 to paint P.S. as being only 12 or 13.
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, 14 was the minimum age that one could be held criminally responsible. As long as the brass on CFB Namao claimed that P.S. was only 12 or 13 they could justify not bringing in the RCMP to deal with P.S..
Why is this important?
The Canadian Forces had pulled out all of the stops to move the court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae “in-camera” thereby ensuring that the public would never discover that McRae and P.S. had molested well over 25 children on CFB Namao.
If P.S. had been investigated by the RCMP and the RCMP had laid charges, P.S. would have gone to Juvenile Court to be dealt with. And this would have negated all of the work that the CF and the DND had put into moving McRae’s court martial “in-camera”.
In Juvenile Court the court had the power to try any adult who had contributed to the delinquency of a minor. The DND and the CF would have been unable to move a civilian tribunal “in-camera” and thus the doings of Captain McRae and P.S. would have been available for the public to see.
The public would have learnt the McRae was bringing children over to the chapel and “fooling around” with them after giving them alcohol.
The public would have learnt that McRae was suspected of molesting well over 25 children.
The public would have learnt that during his ecclesiastical trial with the Catholic Church he admitted to having molested children for years wheich meant that he probably molested children on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
The Public would have learnt that Captain McRae had been investigated for “Acts of Homosexuality” at Royal Military College Kingston which is directly adjacent to Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
So the Canadian Forces stood to lose a lot if they allowed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S..
Instead the R.C.M.p. were not called in and P.S. would go on to have a very lengthy criminal record for child molestation. In addition to the charges and convictions in his CPIC file, there are many more charges that were either dismissed or dropped.
How many of these instances of child sexual abuse didn’t need to occur if the RCMP had been called in as they should have been.
There is no moving on from this.
This isn’t just a slight “hiccup” or a tiny “boo-boo”
The Canadian Forces chain of command may not have intended to my life to have been affected in so many ways by the decisions made in 1980.
But it was.
And it’s not as simple as not thinking about it, or moving on from it.
The damage is done.
There’s no erasing it.
There’s no moving on from it.
It’s like you see those guys who were wrongfully convicted, and they spent 30 or 40 years in prison. And when they get out everyone just expects them to move on with their life even though they were sent to prison on lies, their friends long since abandoned them and their families have moved on, technology has moved on, the life they had was long since obliterated. There’s nothing for them to go back to. No matter how many apologies they get or they receive it won’t undo what was done.
That’s where I am. Due to my dealings with Captain Totzke and the 1-1/2 years of abuse at the hands of Captain McRae and P.S. I have absolutely no idea of what I am.
Am I gay?
Am I queer?
Am I a homosexual like Captain Totzke called me?
Am I straight?
If Captain Totzke hadn’t fucked with my brain would I be married?
Would I have had a wife?
Maybe a husband?
A boyfriend?
A girlfriend?
Now that I know the truth about 1980 it doesn’t make things any better.
As an adult I fully understand that I didn’t make P.S. abuse my younger brother, I didn’t allow P.S. to abuse my younger brother. P.S. abused my brother because my grandmother was a piss tank alcoholic and my father was living off base chasing skirts.
From August of 1980 until the last time I spoke with my father in September of 2006 he made sure that I understood that my brother’s issues were because I let the babysitter touch him.
You don’t get over that.
“But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.”
Or how an Independent at arms length agency is controlled by the agency that it is supposed to be overseeing and is supposed to be independent from.
It looks as if the Canadian Forces is getting slagged in the media again. This time not for its abysmal ability to investigate matters of sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces.
No, the Canadian Forces is getting slagged for interfering with the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces.
The Office of the Ombudsman has powers that the Military Police Complaints Commission doesn’t have. The Ombudsman can compel members of the Canadian Armed Forces to appear before any of its investigations. One would think that this matter would also extend to retired service members who were subject to the Code of Service discipline at the material time of the investigation.
The Ombudsman is supposed to have unfettered access to DND and CF records and can compel the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence to hand records and documents over to the Ombudsman for their investigation.
Why does the Ombudsman have these powers? Because no criminal charges can flow from a Ombudsman review. The Ombudsman can only make non-binding recommendations to the Minister of National Defence, the Department of National Defence, and the Canadian Forces.
For example
In 1974 there was a group of teenagers on Canadian Forces Base Valcartier in the province of Quebec. These teenagers were all between the ages of 12 and 18 and were members of various army cadet corps from across Canada. Somehow a live grenade found its way into the hands of one of the teenagers during a class session on ordnance. One cadet even asked the instructor, a captain of the regular force if it was a real grenade, the captain responded that no it wasn’t. So the teenager did what any curious teenager would have done, they pulled the pin and released the handle.
In 2013 the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces received the permission of the then Conservative Minister of National Defence Rob Nichols to undertake an investigation of a pre-mandate issue.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Ombudsman would not have been allowed to conduct this pre-mandate review in the era of Harjit Sajjan or for that matter Justin Trudeau. After all, it was Harjit Sajjan that accused me of playing games and having an angle when I went to speak with him in February of 2016 just after he became the Minister of National Defence.
Even my local MP, Dr. Hedy Fry says that she can’t become involved in my matter because there are “no military bases” in Vancouver Centre.
And it was under Sajjan’s command that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces refused to release to me the court martial transcripts of Captain Father Angus McRae along with the Canadian Forces Special Investigations paperwork all because they indicated that the Canadian Forces chain of command was well aware in 1980 that my babysitter, P.S. had been molesting numerous children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and that Captain Father Angus McRae, who the MPCC called a known pedophile in 2020, was enticing children over to the rectory at the base chapel and getting them drunk before “fooling around” with them.
I have absolutely no idea as to why the Liberal Party of Canada refuses to allow the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces to conduct an investigation into historical child sexual abuse in the era of the pre-1998 National Defence Act but neither Harjit Sajjan, Dr. Hedy Fry, nor Justin Trudeau seem to show any inclination to uncover what was hidden by a well known defective military justice system.
And I’m not imagining this interference.
Lo-and-Behold, it would appear that the Minister of National Defence and the Deputy Minister of National Defence have been interfering with the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces.
A few years ago Randal Garrison, the MP for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke and then the Vice Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence asked Lt. General. Christine Whitecross during a committee hearing who had jurisdiction for the investigation of child sexual assaults on the bases in Canada. She blathered out some meaningless drivel about all child sexual abuse matters being handed over to the civilian authorities.
Sure, I wasn’t a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. But my father was. And under the Ombudsman’s mandate I am allowed to ask the Ombudsman to review a matter in relation to my involvement with the military justice system back in 1980.
Section 12(f) allows me to avail myself to the CF Ombudsman
These are the policies that guide the office of the Ombudsman.
DND and the CF SHALL provide……..Hrrmmmm. So the Ombudsman can review military police investigations. Interesting.During a Military Police Complaints Commission investigation the CFNIS and the MPs can tell the MPCC to go piss up a rope. Not so with the CF Ombudsman.The Military Police Complaints Commission has no such authority.A very interesting annex.
According to the above Annex B, the Canadian Forces are preventing the Ombudsman from conducting criminal investigations. But the Canadian Forces are also stating that there is nothing stopping the Ombudsman from conducting an investigation while a Military Police or CFNIS investigation is underway. So there would have been nothing stopping the Ombudsman from reviewing how military dependents are treated by the military justice system which is set up to deal primarily with perpetrators and victims that are subjected to the Code of Service Discipline and not civilians with no connection to the Canadian Forces other than they were military dependents at the time of the alleged crimes.
For instance the Ombudsman could review how the 3-year-time-bar or the Summary Investigation flaw actively prohibits the Canadian Armed Forces or any civilian court from bringing Code of Service Discipline charges against any person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline prior to December of 1998.
The Ombudsman could also review how military dependents and other civilians availing themselves to the military justice system receive no actual victim services from the Canadian Forces as they are not members of the Canadian Forces and how often these military dependents receive no help from the provinces as the provinces consider sexual abuse on the military bases to be a Ottawa issue.
The Ombudsman could also initiate an inquiry to look at the rates of child sexual abuse on the bases prior to 1998 and determine if the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaw denied justice to children and also served to present an artificially low incidence of child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada.
The Ombudsman could also look into how the appalling homophobic attitudes of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence resulted in male children being subjected to “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces military social workers.
I never wanted to CF Ombudsman to judge P.S. and determine if P.S. was guilty of what I accused him of.
I only wanted the CF Ombudsman to review child sexual abuse on the Canadian Forces Bases in the era of the pre-1998 National Defence Act and to have the CF Ombudsman urge the Minister of National Defence and the Department of National Defence to do the right thing.
And you wonder why I am so looking forward to my date with death in 2023.
A person can only be told “Up” is “Down” and “White” is “Black” for so long before all of the demons from the past urge one to just give in an fall into the eternal slumber where none of this shit will ever haunt a person again.
There were a couple of songs that still stand out from my youth.
It wasn’t until my father fled from Alberta to Ontario in April of 1983 to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services that I started to become exposed to popular music outside of what my uncle Doug would buy for me.
Up until we arrived at Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario I had never gone to a public school. My education up to the point was at schools for military dependents on base.
My grandmother had the stereo system glued to 790 CFCW. Richard was much the same. He really only listened to country music.
My first taste of music that wasn’t country and western was the kid’s disco that used to be put on every Sunday at the Lamplighter Pub on CFB Namao for the military kids that lived on Lancaster Park on CFB Namao.
When we arrived in Toronto this was the first time that I had been exposed to music that wasn’t country.
There was Pop, Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, New Age, Progressive Rock, Hip-hop, Rap, Reggae, Top 40, you name it and the kids at Sheppard Public School listened to it.
It was also at this time that I began to realize that songs could tell stories. And more than just about rusty pickup trucks, dead dogs, and cheatin’ wives.
Whenever I hear the opening saxophone on “Overkill” by Men At Work I can visualize myself looking over the ravine out of the bedroom window of our PMQ at 94 Sunfield Road where we lived prior to moving to 223F Stanley Greene Park. I can also kinda smell and feel the humidity of that first summer living in Toronto.
Another song that will take me to back is “Come Dancing” by the Kinks. My brother absolutely hated the line “It’s only natural”. “Our House” by Madness is another one that would drive him bonkers if I sang along with it.
One of the first songs that I noticed that kinda spoke to me about what things were like at home was “Where is this love?” by the Payolas.
As psychologically damaged as my grandmother was, my father was even worse. My father had his anger, his depression, his PTSD, his alcoholism, and his physical strength. Under no circumstance did you ever want Richard upset with you. Living with him was like walking on egg shells.
If things had gone to shit at work for Richard you didn’t want to bother him. If he had too much to drink at the mess he wasn’t too bad when he was pissed drunk, but the next day when he was having his hangover you just steered the fuck clear of him. Sometimes when Richard was a little too pissed drunk for Sue’s liking she’d kick him out of bed and banish Richard to the living room to sleep. Usually not on the couch though. He’d usually be on the floor, rolling around stark naked and screaming at the top of his lungs. Even when we’d try to take Richard a blanket or try to calm him down Sue would come down and tell us to leave him alone, that he had to learn his lesson. So, it would usually be a sleepless night listening ti him yell and howl from the living room.
It was a few years after this that I heard another song that kinda spoke to me. It was “Luka” by Suzanne Vega.
The third song that I had heard of was actually introduced to me by someone else. I didn’t hear this song on my own as it was slightly before my time.
I was working for Ed Blaha, Bruce Beveridge, and Dirk Verdoold at Rainbow Games. Ed worked for the Metropolitan Toronto Police at Central Traffic. Dirk was an officer at 14th Division. Bruce was Ed’s childhood friend from when they grew up together in Montreal.
The three of them had purchased a pool hall at Keele and Sheppard on the North East corner of the base. Initially there was a fourth partner, Gary Mountjoy, but he sold his interest in the business very early on. I started working there in late ’87 – early ’88.
One of the things that Ed noticed right off the bat is that even though I was 16. Richard really didn’t seem to give a fuck where I was or how late I was out to. I would frequently sleep overnight in the work shop. And not once would Richard come looking for me.
And things were getting rough at home for other reasons as well.
Rainbow Games provided video games, pinball machines, and juke boxes to bars and donut shops across the Greater Toronto region.
One day Ed came back from the records wholesaler with an assortment of records for the various juke boxes.
He handed me one 45 and told me to put it in the juke box and play it.
Ed told me to sit down and listen to it.
So I lit up a smoke and drank my coffee and listened to the song as it came on.
It was “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.
This song, as touching as it was, only kinda touched on my family life at home.
See “Cat’s in the Cradle” is about a father who is so tied up in his work that he doesn’t have time to spend with his son like his son wishes that he would, and then when his son has grown up and the father wants to spend time with him, it’s now his son that is to busy to be there for his father. The song doesn’t seem to be about physical or mental abuse.
When the song was over Ed said that as a police officer he had worked with street kids before, and street kids don’t go there because they want to be there, they go there because there’s no one to guide them away from the streets.
Ed said that if his son was ever working for someone and his son wasn’t home for bed before 21:00 that there’d be hell to pay. The fact that my father didn’t give a shit if I didn’t return home for days on end told Ed that something wasn’t right at home.
Ed said that I was bright, that I was smart, and it was my smarts that were keeping me off the streets. Ed asked me if I felt safe at home. I told him no. I told him that in addition to my father I now faced another physical threat in the house.
Ed arranged a room for rent in a house just across the street from the pool hall. The house was a PMQ that was rented by a service member of the Canadian Forces. This guy had just broken up with his wife and his wife had left him and taken their children. He had already rented out one of the children’s bedrooms to another person. This arrangement worked fine until the summer of 1988 when the CF Housing Authority found out that he was renting rooms.
But anyways, from early 1988 until the summer of 1989, almost a year and a half, I had peace. I didn’t have to worry about physical violence or threats of physical violence. I could sleep in peace. In fact I never wet the bed again after I moved out of Richard’s house.
And while “Cat’s in the Cradle” didn’t really focus on my relationship with my father, it did have some similarities.
My father wanted nothing to do with me. And as an adult I wanted very little to do with my father.
My father really didn’t want kids. I have no kids. I don’t think my brother has reproduced either. All I know is that I’m taking this rancid Gill DNA to the grave with me.
What has stuck with me all these years about “Cat’s in the cradle” is the fact that Ed went out of his way to buy this one 45 to act as an icebreaker meant that my dysfunctional home life was actually visible for all to see.
I just wish that the right people had seen the dysfunction and reacted properly.
Beeshive 